Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy gave us another reason why it’s a good thing he’ll be out of a job soon: he doesn’t understand the basics of one of the most crucial policy aspects of it.

Recently, Cassidy was quoted musing about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act and saying that, even though he sponsors the one and only version of it, he would like to see changes to it. Basically, insofar as voting is concerned, the act requires official government-issued identification in order to vote, and it restricts the use of mail-in ballots to certain special cases, preventing mass mailing.

However, Cassidy isn’t on board with control that tight. Moreover, he wants to encourage participation, which he imagines would come from not restricting mail ballots but expanding their use, such as Oregon’s practice of mailing ballots to all who are registered to vote, with that vast bulk coming from driver’s license interactions. Indeed, he claims that having closed primary elections constitutes an impediment to voting, even as the majority of states restrict voter choices when selecting a particular political party’s nominees for office. He tried to back this sentiment by noting that voter turnout for the GOP closed primary in May that produced his defeat was significantly lower than it was for his 2020 general election victory.

There is much ignorance in these comments. While mail ballots do in fact generate increased turnout, this causes the quality of democratic decision-making to decline and opens the door to coercive tactics or those that capitalize on indifference. This is because people don’t vote so much not because they don’t like their choices, but more because they aren’t interested enough and are too busy, even to the point that they forget. Over two-fifths of nonvoting registrants in the 2024 election expressed this, while not even half as many said they were turned off or faced some impediment. (The remainder cited reasons such as being out of town, illness, or others not related to disinterest, dislike, or barriers.)

The reason that well over half of nonvoters cited reasons that, summed up, indicated they couldn’t be bothered is that they essentially were satisfied with the choices presented to them. Fewer than ten percent cited some kind of barrier that presumably Cassidy had in mind that mail ballots or a different primary type would resolve. Overwhelmingly, nonvoting can be summarized this way: you can lead a voter to the polls, but you just can’t make him vote, because the opportunity cost of forgoing alternative activities is greater than any benefit he would perceive from making a choice.

His views on primary type particularly are half-baked. Whatever the degree to which a primary nomination process restricts the input of non-party members, no one is turned away from voting in these elections. If necessary, a simple administrative change allows a voter to cast ballots for a preferred candidate. Nor is his supposed evidence on turnout in any way validating. Comparing turnout in a party primary held in the spring with turnout in a general election in the fall with a presidential election on the ballot compares apples with oranges. Again, lower party primary turnout is even more prone to the satisfaction effect – many registrants don’t care who the nominee is because they know they will prefer whoever it is over the other party’s nominee – and the refusal to spend the minimal time necessary to make a choice makes perfect cost/benefit sense.

That’s why increasing mail ballot access (which only one-sixth of all countries permit in some form) degrades democratic decision-making. It encourages adding to the process the input of those who put so little thought into the most important thing a citizen can do, those most prone to be swayed by emotion, demagoguery, pressure, or coercion – all of which reduce the quality of the decision, if not cede power to special interests in a way that mocks one man, one vote. It brings all of the foibles, if not illegalities, of ballot harvesting to the fore, subverting the quality and sanctity of democratic choice.

As the data show, Cassidy’s mail-in suggestions should marginally increase voting rates, but would do nothing more than that and would decrease the quality of democracy, while his jihad against political parties having at least some control over the most important decision party members can make, party nominations, will do nothing to boost turnout. Given the absolutely fundamental nature of voting to the republic’s health, and given that policy-makers elected through it should have a firm grasp of the issues involved, Cassidy clearly fails at this and provides another reason he deserves to get booted from office.